This article originally appeared in the September/October print edition of Cannabis Business Times. To subscribe, click here.
Pueblo County, Colo., is an outdoor marijuana grower’s dream: Its hot, dry summers begin early and end late, it receives loads of sunshine throughout peak growing months, and the vast and open geography allows for sprawling growing operations.
It’s no wonder businesses like Strawberry Fields, which operates a 2-acre greenhouse facility and two retail centers, and Los Sueños Farms, a 36-acre outdoor growing operation, along with 111 other cultivators have made the southern Colorado region their base of operations.
And the cannabis industry has benefited the local economy: It accounts for over 1,300 jobs in the county; nearly 40 percent of 2015’s commercial building permits were related to the cannabis industry, representing just under $15 million in commercial building expenditures; as of June of this year, the county has earned $1.8 million in taxes and fees from the marijuana industry and is projecting to collect over $3.5 million by year’s end; and, starting in 2017, Pueblo will become the first government entity to give scholarships for higher education funded entirely by the cannabis industry, according to the Pueblo County Commissioner Office.
But most of those jobs, building projects, scholarships and cannabis businesses could be extinct after Nov. 8. A measure asking voters to decide whether the county should opt-out of the recreational marijuana program is on the election ticket and could end Pueblo’s vibrant recreational cannabis industry.
To read the full article in our September/October edition, click here.
Pueblo County, Colo., is an outdoor marijuana grower’s dream: Its hot, dry summers begin early and end late, it receives loads of sunshine throughout peak growing months, and the vast and open geography allows for sprawling growing operations.
It’s no wonder businesses like Strawberry Fields, which operates a 2-acre greenhouse facility and two retail centers, and Los Sueños Farms, a 36-acre outdoor growing operation, along with 111 other cultivators have made the southern Colorado region their base of operations.
And the cannabis industry has benefited the local economy: It accounts for over 1,300 jobs in the county; nearly 40 percent of 2015’s commercial building permits were related to the cannabis industry, representing just under $15 million in commercial building expenditures; as of June of this year, the county has earned $1.8 million in taxes and fees from the marijuana industry and is projecting to collect over $3.5 million by year’s end; and, starting in 2017, Pueblo will become the first government entity to give scholarships for higher education funded entirely by the cannabis industry, according to the Pueblo County Commissioner Office.
But most of those jobs, building projects, scholarships and cannabis businesses could be extinct after Nov. 8. A measure asking voters to decide whether the county should opt-out of the recreational marijuana program is on the election ticket and could end Pueblo’s vibrant recreational cannabis industry.
To read the full article in our September/October edition, click here.
